Faster performing DVR with faster hard drives

[CCTV_Suppliers 0]

Has anyone run any tests to determine that usage of faster hard drives, lets say 10,000 RPM vs. 7,200 RPM hard drives busts the performance of DVR systems?

 

Knowing the fact that majority of the DVR systems performance are hard drive dependent (excluding embedded systems), I am curious if anyone was able to see significant boost in performance by taking hard drives speeds from 5,400 RPM to 10,000 RPM or even higher, 15,000 RPM and if so, how was the performance?

 

I am in process of getting some hardware for this purpose only... latest SATA 10,000 RPM drives and even SCSI 15,000 RPM and see if there is significant functionality increase, if any, that will worth the dollars to offer such systems.

 

There are no price consideration here for such hardware, rather trying to obtain one of the fastest machines that perform DVR functionality.

 

Our tests revealed that going with dual core based processors does increase system performance, but I will not called it "significant" and it increase performance roughly 10%... Even increase of faster video cards with more on-board RAM made very slight change (less than 3%). Increase in RAM helped more, as long as you reduce the SWAP file size and it rated close to 12%. Recently we even tried quad core processor based solution and again, some increase of performance (less than 3%), but does not warrant the expense..

 

That is why I am focusing on speed of the hard drives...

 

We are trying to come up with a hardware requirements that can increase most of the DVR performance at least 50% or preferably 100% faster than their original builds...

 

Any test results that anyone can share?

[rory 0]

here is something I posted a little while back on the following thread in regards to the WD Raptor Sata 10,000 rpm drives:

 

http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=8459

 

 

"As to the speed .. didnt feel any faster, in fact it felt slower, could have just been the fact that you can hear everything it does.

 

Anyway, well copying files to it from a 7200rpm drive was much faster than copying files from it to the 7200rpm drive; tested with 40GB of files copying .. and using a Hard Drive Speed test program I have here, it showed up as the 7200rpm and the Raptor being about the same in reads, though actually the 7200rpm came out faster but it was with less data, even though it was a larger drive, tested it on different sized partitions though, same thing. But the access time was faster on the Raptor, being 5.6ms, with the 7200rpm drive at 7.2ms - not a huge difference though. The score was 990 for the 7200rpm drive, and 1400 for the Raptor, But no idea how they came up with that, stayed pretty much the same each time.

 

I imagine it may be faster in some instances such as where data is being copied to/from it alot, but the noise factor is just not worth that IMO. The 7200rmp drive, a Western Digital SE16-500 in this case, is super quiet, and still feels fast.

 

Perhaps the Raptor might be better suited in a server application where it is in a dedicated server room with acoustic silencing on the walls, racks , cases, etc .. Very Happy Definitely not for a home user though, it will set you MAD! Mind you the clients son doesnt seem to mind, we left it in his PC, though Im going to try to talk him out of it, and going back to the 500GB as his main drive, or at least we may try some other silencer enclosures, and perhaps in Raid 0 next time. "

[rory 0]

If you want real speed increase, look into Solid State Flash Drives, they are coming out in the 500GB+ sizes now (or soon). 1ms+- read compared to 5ms+ read with the 10,000 or 8ms+ read with the 7,200.

[rory 0]

We are trying to come up with a hardware requirements that can increase most of the DVR performance at least 50% or preferably 100% faster than their original builds...

 

Recently built a 2.6 Core 2 Duo (E6750, faster than its E6700 predecessor) with 2GB (2x1GB) Dual DDR2-800, was the fastest I have used to date - I could not imagine it gets any faster Though I'm sure it does.

 

Though I would like to use the 3.Ghz version, it was more $$ though.

The DDR2-800 made a significant difference over DDR2-667.

I dont feel a quad core is going to make a huge difference.

 

One thing to note when using the Intel Core 2 Duo's, if you want full speed you need to turn off the Intel SpeedStep feature in the Bios, or for example a 2.4 runs at 1,600 and a 2.0 runs at 1.2 - most of the time.

 

Also, it will be dependent on the DVR software being used, Geo for example likes alot of RAM; more so than just CPU speed.

[CCTV_Suppliers 0]

Rory, were you using Geovision for these tests? Since I am not familiar with this application, I want to find out how others respond on their respective DVR platforms.

 

I am focusing on DVRs mainly from major manufacturers. Your typical Bosch, American Dynamics and others... excluding embedded based system, which does not really make much of any difference when increasing the speed of the hard drives...

[rory 0]

Neither, just plain Windows XP SP2 (tweaked ofcourse), running tests copying data back and forth in the case of the Raptors. The recent system built though was for a Geo system, which came out to be very fast for Geo, but in general use before Geo was loaded, it was much faster than others I have built in the past. It used standard WDSE16 500GB Drives.

 

If you want a real increase in speed though, I suggest checking out the flash drives. The larger 3.5" ones can cost alot of $$ though right now as they are still new. You could probably get the 2.5" ones then use a converter.